CIMA AGM

Free resit offer from CIMA

CIMA is offering a free resit to sitters who are unsuccessful in their exam in June and July. Unsuccessful candidates will receive an email from CIMA confirming the exam credit has been added to their ‘My CIMA’ account. They will then be able to schedule a resit in the normal way – for free. The offer is only valid for the operational, management and strategic OT tests. Students must have attempted and failed between 1 June and 31 July 2020. No-shows are excluded from the offer.

More Africa cancellations

ACCA has emailed some of its students in Africa to tell them they won’t be sitting exams in July. The list of countries where exams will no longer take place includes Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. ACCA explained: “This carefully considered decision took into account a number of factors, including health concerns for our students and staff.”

CIMA AGM goes remote

For the first time in its 101 year history CIMA held its 2020 annual general meeting remotely. It went live at 11.30am on 3 June BST.

During the meeting Nick Jackson was elected President, and you can read a summary of his inaugural speech on page 43.

Members voted on annual membership fees, which were held at £313 for fellows and £297 for associates. The application fee will be £260 for fellows and £165 for associates. There were no special resolutions. CIMA’s annual report is also out. Accounts to the year end 31 December 2019 show membership grew to 112,617 (up 2,124). The total student population was 106,364.

Income for the year was £60,587,000 and expenditure £60,382,000, giving a total operation gain of £246,000.

A student in China has reported a fellow exam candidate who they saw taking pictures of the exam questions on the computer screen.

They told ACCA: “I think this behaviour has seriously violated the exam discipline and would create unfairness.” Worryingly, the student said this was not the first time they have seen “such a phenomenon”, and is calling on ACCA to “pay more attention to resolved this serious problem”. The student even found an exchange where the student had posted images of their CBE questions, and then asked for assistance on a WeChat group. ACCA was informed, and it tracked the cheating to one student, Chenhui Xu, who has subsequently been removed from the student register and ordered to pay costs of £5,680.

ACCA student fights back against the cheats

In another case, heard on a remote link, Hanxue Zheng was removed from the student registered and fined £5,000 after she was found in possession of unauthorised materials in the form of notes at her exam desk.

CIMA paid auditors £476,00 for their work in 2019, that’s up some £101,000 on the previous year. Which seems a lot.

The report also shows that CIMA has a 10-year lease on its HQ at the Helicon in London, until 2024. One commentator told PQ magazine that it has £22,920,000 outstanding commitments. With the move to more working from home and the global nature of CIMA he wondered if it needed such a big space moving forward.

Sichuang Wang also took unauthorised handwritten notes to his exam sitting for FM. He was removed from the student register and has to pay a fine and costs of £2,750.